Population Growth and Resource Requirements for U.S. Education

Describes how American education may be organized and operated three decades hence and investigates the effects of population growth on the cost of providing this future schooling and on the number of instructional personnel it will require. Relatively more resources will probably go to the prekindergarten and elementary levels in the year 2000; many students will earn high school and college diplomas through instructional television and computer-assisted instruction; and college degrees will be earned with an average of two years' work after high school. This report also investigates the effects of population growth — two-child vs. three-child families — on the cost of future schooling. The more rapid growth rate will lead to about 45 percent higher educational spending in 2000, and to relatively more spending at the pre-kindergarten and elementary levels. However, educational expenditures are unlikely to rise as fast relative to GNP as they did between 1960 and 1970.